RBI pegs 5.7% growth for current fiscal

Mumbai: Projecting a modest pick-up in economic activity in the coming months, Reserve Bank on Friday pegged the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate for the current fiscal at 5.7 percent, significantly lower than the Finance Ministry's forecast of 6.1 to 6.7 percent.

"The Reserve Bank's baseline projection of GDP growth for 2013-14 is 5.7 percent...The bank's current assessment is that activity will remain subdued during the first half of this year with a modest pick-up in the second half, subject to appropriate conditions ensuing," RBI said in its annual monetary policy review for 2013-14.

India's economy grew by 5 percent in the last fiscal, lowest in a decade, on account of poor performance of manufacturing, agriculture and services sector.

The RBI's current fiscal year's growth estimate of 5.7 percent is much lower than the finance ministry's growth projection of 6.1-6.7 percent and Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council's growth projection of 6.4 percent for 2013-14.

It is also lower than the World Bank's growth projection, which predicted Indian economy to grow by 6.1 percent in 2013-14 on account of robust domestic demand, strong savings and investment rate.

Not happy with RBI's growth projection, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia had described its outlook as "pessimistic".

"Reserve Bank is clearly more pessimistic than the government is. I think that the government forecast as of now is feasible. Critically what matters is, how effective we are in restoring the momentum of investment in the large projects", the Plan panel deputy chief said.

Further, the central bank said it expects inflation to hover broadly around the 5.5 percent mark in the current fiscal and will deploy "all instruments at command" to bring it down to 5 percent by March next year.

India's headline inflation in March fell to its lowest in more than three years at 5.96 percent, but the consumer price index remained elevated at 10.39 percent.